How Boarding A Plane Is Way More Complicated Than It Should Be

Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today, we have reports from Vox, The Atlantic Cities and Car and Driver.

Those of you who are too cheap to get priority boarding or whatever will understand.

If asked to devise a boarding method without any data, you might settle on this as a pretty sensible one. But the airlines do have data — and numerous studies have shown this is not a good way to board an airplane, in terms of time or customer satisfaction.

It's not the first time a writer has run out of power in a Tesla Model S trying to make it between charging stations. Nate Berg's experience in Middle of Nowhere, California shows the current flaws with long-distance driving in an EV. But how necessary is it to be able to drive your Tesla from coast to coast anyway?

For drivers of electric vehicles, calculations of distance and range are of near-constant concern. How far you want to go must always be less far than your battery can take you. The Nissan Leaf, for example, can get up to 84 miles of range on a full charge — enough for most people's daily commutes and errands, but hardly a long-distance option. The estimated 265-mile range of a fully equipped Tesla Model S has allayed some concerns about having enough juice to get where you want to go. Coupled with the Supercharger network, it's made the idea of taking a battery-powered road trip feasible — even cross-country. Feasible, I quickly find, is not the same thing as simple.

A feature I'd never thought about much until someone asked me what that little coffee cup light in their C-Class was, so maybe these systems could be useful. A winner would be one that combined it with serving coffee better than what they serve at the Chevron off the highway. For now though, cheaper is good.

Van Dongen said his system would require cheap parts, such as a steering-wheel angle sensor he estimates at five dollars and a small chipset for data processing, which could possibly be installed by an aftermarket shop. While we're certain it'd be more complex and expensive to install than Van Dongen suggests in his research paper—especially since it would require a separate interface to display the alerts and integration into a car's existing electronics—automakers interested in spreading the technology might want to look into verifying his claims.

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